Have the feeling last night that a thunderstorm was imminent, but then nothing happened? You were not alone, as Nanjing yesterday experienced the very rare meteorological condition whereby there is the occurrence of lightning unaccompanied by thunder.
Yesterday, 19 August, saw highly localised storm conditions develop over parts of Nanjing. From approximately 9pm onwards, the skies were lit by lightning as often as every few seconds and in same parts, lasting in some parts for several hours. But in many places there was no sound of thunder as accompaniment.
The phenomenon caused some of Nanjing’s more creative citizens to take to social media to ask whether God was taking a selfie, reports the Yangtze Evening News.
While there is still much we don’t know about the formation of lightning, it’s unlikely it was The Almighty responsible for last night’s strange climatic display.
- Our Summer’s Been Shanghaied, or Nanjinged!
- Rains & Accordians; Weather as Gauge to Emotion & Achievement
It is a rare occurrence indeed, but one with a precedent from last year, where very similar conditions were scientifically studied when they occurred over the John F. Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, USA.
In April of 2019, researchers from the University of New Hampshire Space Science Centre documented the event that is similar to that which took place in Nanjing last night and dubbed it, “fast negative breakdown”.
Traditionally, scientists have held that lightning forms rather on account of “fast positive breakdown”, whereby a “pathway” forms within a cloud in a downward direction from positive charge at the top to the negative in the middle.
Such pathways form at one-fifth the speed of light and are thought to be the definitive cause of lighting.
- Are Global Warming & Less Pollution Changing Nanjing’s Weather?
- Too Hot to Work? Employees’ Rights During High Temperatures
A “fast negative breakdown”, on the other hand, occurs when the charge travels in the opposite or upward direction. This was the phenomenon which was documented as having taken place over the Kennedy Space Centre and that is possibly also responsible for last night’s unusual weather in Nanjing.
That all said, there is still much we don’t know.
In a paper published in a journal by Nature Communications, professor of physics, Liu Ningyu, said, “This is the first time fast negative breakdown has ever been observed, so it’s very exciting”, reported Science X.
In Nanjing, the extremely rare phenomenon was largely confined to the city’s northern areas, prompting the Pukou District Meteorological Observatory to issue an orange thunderstorm warning at 23:07 yesterday. The phenomenon brought on precipitation in Yongning Subdistrict of as much as 50 mm per hour.
Professor Liu concluded, “Despite over 250 years of research, how lightning begins is still a mystery. The [fast negative breakdown] process was totally unexpected and gives us more insight into how lightning starts and spreads”.
